


In Which Those Who Wander Are (Sometimes) Lost

by modsenga



Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Action/Adventure, Aftermath of Violence, Fantasy Violence, Gambling, Gen, Snarky Elves, Some Swearing, Take A Hammer And Fix The Canon, Ufric isn't so bad if you cover one eye, adventuring in -27394580 degree weather, all your friends live in the sewer, and obscure elven races aren't just recolored Altmer, criminals, dragons are cooler, i'm an alchemist not a skooma dealer for godssakes, main character is bisexual, many questionable things are eaten, much flirting is thwarted, much running around in the wilderness picking flowers, relentless headcanoneering of Tamriel's lore and cultures, rob from the rich and give to yourself, this is gonna be a long and bumpy ride, woman's life mission is hijacked by a bunch of dragonslayers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-10
Updated: 2017-11-08
Packaged: 2018-11-12 06:58:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11156664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/modsenga/pseuds/modsenga
Summary: The haphazard story of an Alik'r street urchin who just wants to find her sister, if only Skyrim's rabble of (somewhat smelly) conspiracy theorists would stop getting in her way.





	1. The Ambush

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, all,  
> Welcome to my first published fic on Ao3. This story has been in the works for a LONG time – from drabbles written in the Notes app on my phone to thousands of pages of AU written with friends in Google Docs. The version I present to you now is the central pillar of my Skyrim universe - my own little canon, if you will.  
> Because this is the first chapter, the notes will be lengthier than usual. This will be a long endeavor, and I can't predict how many chapters (or months, or millennia) will go into it. However, if nothing else, it will be a regularly updated endeavor. New chapters will be posted every Sunday unless otherwise stated, and feedback is always more than welcome.  
> This story will feature content from various mods on the Skyrim Nexus and Steam Workshop, as it is based in part off of my own Skyrim playthrough. Featured mods and their authors will be credited at the beginning of every chapter. I will also post a link to that chapter’s writing playlist, if I made one.  
> Many thanks to my ingenious beta reader, C, who has no account on Ao3 but who will undoubtedly be lurking from afar; to Kiki, who has spent countless hours writing with me in Google Docs and squealing about socially awkward half-elves until 1:00 in the morning; and to the Snelf Hell skype group, whom I can always count on for a good rant about the minutiae of Falmeri culture and the failings of Todd Coward (JK, Todd). I sincerely hope you all get some enjoyment from Madia’s triumphs, screw-ups, and general misadventures, as I have.  
> Copyright for Skyrim goes to Bethesda. I own nothing but my original characters. The rest is just me sandboxing in the world they made for us.  
> This week’s playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWalyLs5tc12mPN-AnOBRuXx3JYHY46xQ  
> Featured Mods: Judah – Working Dog at Skyrim Nexus by WolfGrey84  
> 

Across the heart of the Jerall Mountains, winter lay soft and silent. Swaths of pine stood huddled upon the slopes like clustered penguins. The night’s frost had not yet misted away under the touch of sunlight. It lingered still, dusting the trees gray-green, and shimmered under the dawn. Beneath the cold, the forest slept. No living thing dared stir the silence of a morning wrapped in snow.  
Nothing but two thin lines of footprints cutting through the unbroken whiteness, wandering northwards and downwards toward the gleam of a river in the distant valley.  
The footprints kept sparse company with each other, though they never strayed more than two hundred feet or so apart. One, single-file and loping and canine-footed, circled in wide looping arcs through the trees; the other, steadfast, compact, trailed from rock to hollow to tree with distinctly booted feet. Stretching behind them lay the path southward, through wilderness, to Bruma: civilization’s last outpost against the wilds of the northern country and its even wilder warrior-men. Ahead lay new wilderness. Unfamiliar towns, strange foods, strange faces.  
And apparently, never-ending snow.  
A soft whistle rose and fluttered birdlike across the sleeping landscape. The trees rustled with the hint of a breeze. At the moment the whole world was a sleeping child, half-stirred, murmuring: just five more minutes.  
A moment of stillness passed before a single creature appeared through the snow, breaking the silence. A dog, ruddy and dark-furred, bounded toward the source of the whistle. Ice crystals scattered in its wake. Beneath the trees, the two sets of footprints converged on one another and joined together.  
The owner of the booted footprints crouched down and rubbed brisk gloved hands through the dog’s fur. Brown eyes peered over the rim of a scarf. “Hey there. What do you think? Are we safe?”  
Judah had no response. He snuffled at the woman’s deerhide coat and wagged his tail.  
“All right, good enough for me. One more illegal border crossing for the books, hmm? Well, let’s try not to flaunt it. You hungry, boy?”  
Judah boof-ed.  
“Me too. Let’s see what we can find out here.” The dark woman stood up, ignoring his pleading eyes. “I know, I know, but I gave you a whole half of a yam last night. Don’t give me that look.”  
“Mhmrrr.”  
“Nope. You’re gonna get fat.”  
“Mhmmrrrrr.”  
Judah was the farthest thing from being fat, and he knew it. He shuffled up right next to her and sat on her foot, doing his best impression of a teary-eyed toddler.  
“Nuh-uh. My bag isn’t a free market, you know. You want another treat, you’ll have to earn it, just like me. That’s how it works with us two now. Nose down, Judah.”  
Judah, realizing his act was a hopeless cause, gave it up. He sprang to his feet and trotted away down the mountainside, head low, swishing a line in the snow with his furry tail. With the prospect of finding food on the horizon, he was all pricked ears and wired muscle. He disappeared ahead of her into the trees; she followed. When he caught a scent, he’d stop and wait for her. That was the trick they used to lie low: no voices, no noise. They hunted together and silent, like wolves.  
So when the dog’s wild baying scattered the silence like a flock of birds, the hair on the back of her neck shot up and her tomahawk was in hand before she realized it. She dashed silently away through the trees, following Judah’s tracks towards whatever mountain predator had sprung up to surprise them.

Under normal circumstances, she was not someone who was lightly caught off her guard. She’d tracked mature dunerippers through the shifting sands of the Alik’r Desert, avoided bonewolves and swooping cliff racers in the wastes of Morrowind, and relieved even the quickest hands of their purses (and, when occasion called, the full use of their digits) in every city she’d walked in over the last twenty years. She slept at odd hours, with her eyes open and one hand on the dagger hilt. And she kept to the shadows and the wilderness when she took it upon herself to travel, hugging the odd angles of landscapes like dust in the trickiest corner of a room. Put simply, she was just not that easy to notice in the first place, let alone sneak up on or surprise.  
But every once in awhile, such as when one attempts to save one’s dog from a supposed wild animal and instead finds one’s dog being set upon by a cloaked man with a knife in his hand, being difficult to notice became less of a priority.  
She dove for Judah’s attacker with her teeth bared. She didn’t see the camouflaged archer behind him until it was too late.  
The solid, wet impact of a steel arrowhead in her shoulder sent her to the ground. She rolled, inhaling a faceful of snow. Her good arm scrambled for the tomahawk. A man was shouting. Somewhere behind or above or in front of her, the dark blurry form of Judah was ripping into another dark, blurry form with his teeth. The snarls of a dogfight filled the air.  
Still gasping, she rolled to her knees and dove for the nearest tree. She could feel loose magicka rising from her blood and misting around the embedded arrowhead, instinctively trying to undo the last ten seconds of biological time. Braced against the meager shelter of the pine, she twisted around and clamped her hand over her shoulder. Light burst from her palm and drizzled over the injury. She chanted to herself in her mind as the spell sank in. Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry.  
In the mere moment it took for the flesh to knit together, push the arrow out, and seal itself, the woods had become alive with fighting bodies.

She peered out from her shelter to gulp in the scene. Judah had disappeared. A dog in an armored leather vest was lying splayed in the snow, gasping as blood poured from its torn throat. The Imperial crest was emblazoned into the leather. Beyond it, the archer who’d shot her was pinned against the trunk of a great pine, his feet almost a foot off the ground. Throttling him to death was an enormous man wrapped in bearskin. At first glance, she almost mistook him for the real thing. But as she looked around her, that notion fled from her mind.  
More and more of them were appearing out of the woods. They burst from drifts of snow, rose up from thickets of bracken, and sprang from the shelter of trees. Red cloaks flashed against the snow beneath layers of leaf and camouflage. Shouts and crashing metal rang out. In seconds they were everywhere. And trampling among them with blades bared were men and women, huge men and women, armored in mismatched plates and robed in the furry hides of fallen kills. There were dogs, too. Big war dogs and wolf hybrids, clumsily armored with dyed blue leather and heavy collars. They clustered in a circle to fight the swarm of steel-studded soldiers bursting from the hidden crevices of the woods.  
Bodies already littered the ground. A few of them belonged to the massive warriors. But as she watched from her hiding place, more and more Imperial soldiers began pouring into view, shedding snow-bound disguises as they went. 

She was no fool. She’d played field medic for the Empire long enough to know an ambush when she saw one. This had been planned, she could see it in the way the soldiers moved and fought: purposeful, coordinated. The mountainside was swiftly becoming cloaked in gold and red -- the Legion’s colors. Whoever these mountain warriors were, they were about to be surrounded.  
And Judah had just killed one of the Legion’s prized attack dogs.  
_Time to go,_ she thought.  
Her shoulder twinged, but she crawled backwards on her elbows and knees anyway, whistling sharp and clear through the din. No one seemed to notice. As shouts and the clang of iron on steel reverberated off the mountainside, she slithered away into the bare bushes, then stood and ran. But her eyes still cast about for Judah.  
It was simply bad luck. In her urgency to locate the dog, she missed it: the glint of a steel shield as the rising sun refracted off its edge, as the arm holding it swung outward into her path. One instant of her eyes looking in the wrong direction at the wrong time. That was all it took. The metal shield struck her in the temple.  
She hit the ground in an explosion of snow and rolled. By the time she stopped rolling, everything had ceased to exist.


	2. Update on Chapter 2: IT IS COMING

OKAY I know I said this was gonna be a weekly update, but apparently I forgot once again that I have a limited number of daily spoons with which to do things other than lay on my bed in a state of half-existence! BUT I am always thinking about/planning for this story in one way or another, so it has in no way been forgotten. I just sat down tonight to start re-writing Chapter 2, so expect to see it sometime next week! (Unless I decide to completely procrastinate on all the essays I have due on Monday, which is quite possible.)

Thanks, lovelies! See you soon with another chapter!   
\-- Senga


End file.
